Unbeknownst to the Eisenhower administration, the Russians had not only captured Powers but they had also recovered a large section of the plane, as well as cameras and other equipment, including the pilot’s survival kit, which included Russian money, as well as women’s jewelry and men’s watches to win favor with his captors. Because Powers was immediately taken captive, he had no opportunity to use the survival kit as part of his escape. Nor did he have time to take his life with the poison pin that was part of his kit.
Nikita Khrushchev, premier of the Soviet Union, waited to see how the United States would respond to the loss of their aircraft over Soviet soil. When the U.S. issued its fabricated tale of the purpose of the flight, Khrushchev sprang his trap. On May 7, 1960, he revealed to the Supreme Soviet what he knew about the flight. “I must tell you a secret,” he said. “When I was making my report, I deliberately did not say that the pilot was alive and in good health . . . And now, just look how many silly things [the Americans] have said.” His statement shone the light of truth on the American pronouncement that “there was no authorization for any such flight” from Washington.
The political fallout from the U-2 incident came the following week, when Eisenhower and Khrushchev were to meet in Paris for a long-awaited summit meeting. When the president refused to apologize for the violation of international law with U.S. spy planes, Khrushchev walked out of the talks and the summit abruptly ended.
Francis Gary Powers pleaded guilty in a Soviet court on August 17, 1960, and was convicted of espionage. His life was spared, but he was sentenced to three years imprisonment and seven years of hard labor. After serving a year and a half of his sentence, he was freed from a Soviet jail in a prisoner swap. In return for Powers’s release, the U.S. turned over Rudolf Abel, a Russian spy serving time in an American prison.
The end of the age of the U-2 did not, however, mean the end of American surveillance of Soviet military facilities. Work on a spy satellite, code-named Corona, was increased. In the meantime, the U.S. deployed a supersonic spy plane, Oxcart, to continue surveillance. Corona was an operational space surveillance system for thirteen years, until 1972, taking pictures with a 70-degree panoramic camera that filmed by scanning at a right angle to the path of the aircraft. The list of surveillance accomplishments of the Corona is long, including imaging all Soviet medium-range, intermediate-range, and intercontinental missile facilities and determining the exact locations of Soviet air defense missile batteries.
There is an ironic final chapter to the U-2 story. Fifteen years after the spy swap brought Francis Gary Powers back to the United States, he began work as a traffic helicopter pilot for a television station in Los Angeles. On August 1, 1977, he was killed when his helicopter crashed.
IN 1945, IN A TOUCHING ACT OF FRIENDSHIP, a group of Soviet schoolchildren presented a two-foot, hand-carved wooden replica of the Great Seal of the United States to the American ambassador W. Averell Harriman. As a sign of his gratitude for the gift, Harriman hung the Great Seal in his office in Spaso House, the ambassador’s residence in Moscow.
The Great Seal hung on the wall for seven years until ambassador George Kennan took up residence at Spaso House. It was only then that a routine security check revealed a shocking secret buried in the wooden seal. A hidden microphone had broadcast all conversations that had taken place in the ambassador’s office.
Kennan explained in his memoirs how the tiny microphone was found in the carved eagle. He explained that Spaso House had been redecorated by a Soviet work crew without supervision by American security agents. The room was checked for bugs after the work was complete, but no listening devices were discovered. However, a second sweep was ordered when more modern detection technology was available. The hidden microphone was immediately discovered.
Kennan remembers the discovery this way: “Quivering with excitement, the technician extracted from the shattered depths of the seal a small device, not much larger than a pencil . . . capable of being activated by some sort of electronic ray from outside the building. When not activated, it was almost impossible to detect.” Although the device was crude when compared to today’s eavesdropping devices, Kennan was correct in assessing that the device “represented, for that day, a fantastically advanced bit of applied electronics.”
To call the device electronic was not actually accurate, though, since it had no battery or power source. It was simply a resonator chamber with a flexible front wall that acted as a diaphragm. The sound waves from conversations in the room would vibrate this diaphragm. Meanwhile, Soviet agents in a truck outside the building would shoot a high-frequency radio beam, which would hit the bugging device’s antenna. The modulations from the device were reflected on the radio beam back to the truck, where they were interpreted as conversation.
When the United States displayed the bug, most experts in the intelligence community were confounded by it. How did the Thing — as it came to be called — work, since it had no power source? Peter Wright, the top spy scientist for England’s MI5, answered that question and had MI5 technicians build a version of it (code-named Satyr), which was used by United States and British intelligence.
While many Americans were shocked by the Soviet’s blatant eavesdropping, intelligence experts saw it for what it was, another example of a battle between two Cold War foes who were constantly trying to get the upper hand. In fact, the Spaso House had been under constant surveillance for decades. In the 1930s, guests at the U.S. ambassador’s home were given cards welcoming them and warning them: Every room is monitored by the KGB and all of the staff are employees of the KGB. We believe the garden also may be monitored. Your luggage may be searched two or three times a day. Nothing is ever stolen and they hardly disturb things. So, the Thing surprised no seasoned intelligence officers.
And, as part of the Cold War cat-and-mouse game between the United States and the Soviet Union, the discovery of the listening device in the Great Seal was kept secret for eight years, until 1960, when the U.S. could use such information to its advantage. On May 26, 1960, U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr., unveiled the “Great Seal Bug” before members of the UN Security Council to quiet Soviet accusations of U-2 spy flights. Lodge used the listening device to show the UN that the Soviets spied on Americans and thereby blunt a Soviet resolution denouncing the United States for its espionage flights.
In June 1957, after Aldrich Ames completed his sophomore year of high school, he took a summer job at the CIA headquarters in nearby Langley, Virginia. He worked as a records analyst, marking classified documents for filing. He returned to the same job for the next two summers. Three years later, after he’d left college because of poor grades, Ames went back to work at the CIA, this time as a document analyst. So began the CIA career of Aldrich “Rick” Ames.
Ames’s father had had a short (and unsuccessful) tenure as a CIA agent in Southeast Asia in the 1950s. Perhaps Aldrich Ames joined the CIA, in part, to carry on the work that his father had not done terribly well. He was accepted into the CIA’s Career Trainee Program in 1967. As part of his training, he learned how to recruit and manage agents who were able and willing to provide actionable intelligence to the U.S. government. Agents who perform this sort of recruiting are called operations officers or case officers. Although Ames’s psychological profile seemed to indicate that he was ill suited for such work — he did not have the easy, outgoing personality that such officers needed — he was considered a strong trainee. Finishing his training in October 1968, Ames received his first posting overseas in Ankara, Turkey.
In Ankara, Ames held the same job that he was to hold for most of his career: recruiting Russians or persons from other Communist countries. And, as was the case for most of his career, he wasn’t successful or happy in that position. Some veteran agents didn’t expect much from a first-year agent, but his supervisors were convinced he was not cut out for that job. One officer noted that Ames couldn’t even succeed in the first level of the job,
recruiting what are called access agents, people who did not themselves have intelligence but who have access to the people who did. Generally, a small stipend would be offered by an agent like Ames to secure the services of a secretary or low-level embassy official who worked for someone who would know valuable information.
Ames received strong ratings and was given a bump in grade and salary after the first year. That was the high point of his first assignment because his performance ratings declined over the next two years. His superiors felt that he was best suited to work behind a desk at Langley. Ames was crushed by the criticism of his work and considered leaving the agency. However, he decided to return to the job even though he would be stuck at headquarters. It was a decision that would start him on a path of treachery and betrayal.
Perhaps because he was better suited to handle paperwork rather than fieldwork, Ames received very good reviews from his superiors at Langley. But, more important, he worked in the Soviet–East European (SE) Division of the Directorate of Operations for four years. He specialized in clandestine operations. The United States remained locked in a cold war with the Soviet Union, so he received training in Russian and provided support for CIA operations against Russian officials. Before long, however, his ratings slipped as he began drinking alcohol heavily. Yet his drinking problem was never given the attention by his superiors that it deserved.
He next served in New York City from 1976 until 1981, but his performance continued to be inconsistent. Nonetheless, he received several promotions and a bonus, even though his inattention to detail became a more serious problem. For example, Ames left a briefcase filled with classified documents on a subway. The FBI was able to recover the briefcase, but they were unsure if the contents had been compromised while the briefcase was lost. In 1980, Ames left top-secret communications equipment unsecured in his office. Despite such serious breaches of security rules, he was never officially reprimanded.
Why would an intelligence agent who received lukewarm evaluations at best be allowed to continue in the service of his government in such a sensitive area, where he would have ready access to secret files? The most likely explanation seems to be the “good old boy” culture that can infect an agency like the CIA or the FBI. In such a male-dominated environment, the men who have worked there for a long time are protective of one another, and supervisors are often reluctant to discipline or fire agents whose performance does not meet the agency’s standards.
The next stop for Ames was Mexico City, where he continued to concentrate on Soviet cases. At this point, his marriage was failing and his evaluations by his superiors were generally unenthusiastic. To make matters worse, Ames’s drinking became a public problem, which should have been a red flag for his supervisors. An agent under the influence of liquor is a danger to the CIA and other agents since he may blurt out any of the secrets he knows. Instead, Ames was noted as a “social drinker,” with “no serious alcohol problem.”
Back at Langley in the fall of 1983, Ames was given the most unlikely of jobs when he was appointed counterintelligence branch chief for Soviet operations, giving him access to the files of all CIA operations involving Russian intelligence officers worldwide. In addition, he had access to all CIA plans and operations against the KGB and its successor, the GRU. Rick Ames now had at his fingertips all the information that would make him dangerous to the CIA and its Soviet agents.
Ames’s wife filed for divorce, and Ames agreed to pay her three hundred dollars a month for nearly four years. He also agreed to pay off more than thirty-three thousand dollars in credit-card debt. He later told an interviewer that he was “trying to make some money that I felt I needed very badly, and in a sense that I felt at the time, one of terrible desperation.” It was at this point, the winter of 1984–1985, that he first considered the possibility of espionage as a means of easing his financial troubles.
In a sense, lax CIA oversight made it easy for him to follow through on his plan. He had been given approval to return to the field to cultivate Soviet officials in the hope of getting them to “turn” and agree to work for the CIA. Ames, of course, had a different reason for wanting to meet and cultivate Soviet officials. He got his chance when he met Sergei Dimitriyevich Chuvakhin, an arms control specialist in the Soviet Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Slowly the men began to understand each other. Chuvakhin understood that Ames was interested in trading intelligence for cash. Ames knew he had a deal.
On April 16, 1985, Rick Ames walked into the Soviet embassy in Washington, D.C., handed an envelope to the duty officer, and asked for Chuvakhin by name. After a short conversation with Chuvakhin, Ames walked out of the embassy, his first packet of secret intelligence delivered and received. He would make many more deliveries over the next nine years.
What was in that first envelope? A note detailing a few CIA cases involving Soviets who were working for the CIA. He also included one page from a CIA memo with his name highlighted, showing the KGB that he was in a position to offer them sensitive intelligence. Finally, he included a request for a payment of $50,000. Within a month, Ames received his first payment from the KGB. Knowing the value of this CIA mole, the KGB instructed Chuvakhin to ask Ames to continue their working relationship.
But Rick Ames’s espionage did not stop with that one deal. In fact, before he was arrested, he met with Soviet handlers all over the world, depending on his posting, and delivered as many as one thousand pages a year. For one meeting with Chuvakhin in Washington, Ames walked out of CIA headquarters with five to seven pounds of secret message traffic in plastic bags. He knew that the CIA no longer inspected packages and briefcases carried out of the building by agency employees. On the evening in question, Ames calmly walked to his car in the parking lot, dumped the plastic bags in the trunk, and drove off to his meeting with Chuvakhin.
It didn’t take the CIA very long to realize that something was dreadfully wrong with their Soviet operations. By the end of 1985, the CIA learned that three of its “assets” (useful agents for performing covert operations) had been arrested. Far more troubling, all had been executed. As one CIA officer put it, the KGB was “wrapping up our cases with reckless abandon.” The agency found it odd, however, that the Soviets would “roll up,” or shut down, the cases in such rapid succession by capturing and killing American agents, because such action could draw unwanted attention to anyone who had access to relevant information. Ames later said that the KGB had realized its mistake and took action from then on to be more careful with their roll-ups and do what it could to mislead the CIA. For example, they would set out bogus evidence that an operative had been discovered by other means, or they would simply let an agent continue his work, although under very strict surveillance, making sure that he was kept clear of sensitive information. In all, however, twenty cases had been compromised, causing a “virtual collapse” of the CIA’s Soviet operations.
If the agency was quick to spot the problem, they were inexplicably slow in making a serious attempt to find the mole. Some CIA officers refused to face the possibility that there was a traitor in their ranks. In the meantime, Ames had remarried and was receiving large sums of money for his betrayal. One deposit made to a secret bank account was for $300,000. Each time he delivered intelligence to his handler, he received between $20,000 and $50,000. At the end of 1985, the Soviets informed Ames that they would pay him $2 million in addition to the money he had already received. The Soviets were eager to pay him.
Ames was making so much money that he didn’t know what to do with it. In what ultimately led to his downfall, Ames spent a lot of it, telling people that his new wife’s parents were very rich. He paid nearly half a million dollars cash for a home in an affluent Virginia suburb and then spent $100,000 for home improvements. He bought a white Jaguar sedan for $50,000, spent about $25,000 for his wife’s graduate school program, and paid $14,300 for his son’s nanny. And he did all this on an annual CIA salary that was not quite $70,000.
Ames needed a way to hide hi
s illegal money. He deposited money in eight different U.S. banks and investment companies. He was careful with his deposits, making sure none was over $10,000, since banks need to report deposits over that level to a federal banking agency. He also opened bank accounts in Colombia and Italy, as well as in two Swiss banks: one in his name, the other in the name of his new mother-in-law. He listed himself as the primary trustee on the latter account, giving him quick access to the money. These accounts topped out at $1.8 million. It is estimated that from 1985 to 1993, Ames and his wife spent nearly $1.4 million (including on the house) and regularly racked up $50,000 on their credit cards.
Ames’s extravagant spending did not go unnoticed by his colleagues at the CIA. One worker called his spending “blatantly excessive.” This same coworker reported that Ames’s spending was a common topic of office conversation. Another colleague knew that Ames’s phone bill reached $5,000 per month. It was also common knowledge that Ames and his wife traveled frequently throughout Europe. Still, no one at Langley made the connection between Ames’s sudden wealth and the disappearance of operatives in the Soviet Union.
Despite the danger flags that Rick Ames waved in its face, the CIA did nearly nothing to confront their agent or investigate his activities until 1986, when it established a special task force to look into the destruction of its Soviet program. In October of that year, the FBI learned that two of its Soviet operatives had been rolled up. The bureau responded with a task force team of its own. Despite a history of turf wars, the CIA and the FBI shared some intelligence with each other and finally agreed to an “off-site” conference to discuss the problem. But, as one CIA agent wrote, the agency made a “conscious decision . . . concerning the degree to which we are gong to cooperate with and open ourselves to the FBI.”
The Dark Game Page 12